No Man’s Sky Devs Finally Reveal Major Update

It’s been a rough few months since Hello Games released No Man’s Sky. After a lead-up filled with massive amounts of fan enthusiasm, many fans blasted the game once they actually got to experience it. Major bugs, the lack of promised features and the discovery that the game’s promised multiplayer elements didn’t even allow players in the same location to see each other led to a significant backlash, up to and including an investigation into false advertising claims by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority.

Now, Hello Games is trying to come back from the game’s devastating launch with the first of many promised free updates to the game. This update, known as the “Foundation Update,” adds additional gameplay modes to the game as well as a number of other features that fans have been waiting for since release.

The Foundation Update introduces basebuilding to the game, which includes the claiming of abandoned bases and the introduction of automatic harvesting and storage units to keep players from having to harvest resources themselves. Players also have the ability to hire alien researchers to work at their bases, and to purchase summonable freighters that act as bases in space. “Creative” and “Survival” modes are also added to the game, giving players the option of focusing on building large bases and exploring or taking on larger challenges and seeing how long they can survive. Other features in the update include a messaging system, the ability to add save points anywhere, new visuals and items, assorted bug fixes and more. Additional details are available in the patch notes for the update at the No Man’s Sky website.

Even Hello Games head Sean Murray, who’s been largely silent on the Internet since the game’s release, took to Twitter to post about the update’s release:

If you could have lived our lives over the last months, you'd know how meaningful this is.

His tweet doesn’t address the game’s rocky launch directly, though it does make it sound like the last few months have been pretty rough at the Hello Games office. Though some members of the community commented on how Murray seemed to be projecting a victim mentality in the tweet, others have defended him and the Hello Games team.

It will be interesting to see how the Foundation Update and additional updates to No Man’s Sky shape the game going forward. While it may never enjoy the popularity that it could have had with a perfect launch, adding new features and actively trying to improve the gameplay experience could go a long way toward making the fans happy with the game. While it’s likely impossible for the game to live up to its pre-launch hype, only time will tell whether its expansions will redeem it in the public eye.